In 2010, we moved back to the small town in Colorado that I never stopped missing while we lived in Mexico. Now I sometimes miss Mexico, but I wouldn't travel as freely as we did when we were there, camping out in remote areas and so forth.

Mexico today is in a period of change, and in many ways it is more dangerous now. That said, I have plenty of American friends who still live there very happily, just taking a few more precautions than they did in the past.

Just to say!

Rosana

Search for:

Archives

Archives

Visit Expedia…

Expedia is my favorite place to book airfare, and they handle hotels, car rentals, cruises, etc. I like the organization of the site for figuring out what flights I want. Click on the suitcase to take a look.

I was very pleased to win an award for this blog! Even better for you: click through for lists of all sorts of award-winning travel blogs.

March 9, 2006 — I’m in the mood to point out that living in any other country is a challenge. Interesting, yes, worthwhile, yes, but not entirely bliss! Mexican culture grows out of a tremendously different historical past than ours, and there are numerous opportunities for misunderstandings between “us” and “them.” This comment isn’t based on any particular event I’ve experienced; it’s more a warning to people who are dreaming of how great life would be if they left their home in the US (or Canada or anywhere else) and settled in warm, sunny, cheap Mexico where the people (as I often say) are so friendly.

Often Kelly and I do feel that our lives are great. We sit eating a meal on our verandah, overlooking our swimming pool and tropical gardens, in perfect shirt-sleeve weather with few bugs, and we are very content. We’ve even been known to gloat!

BUT there are challenges aplenty. The numbers of dead dogs that we saw beside the highway on our recent trip still haunt me. I’m getting more at ease with how Mexicans drive, but it’s still very daunting to me at times. Already more talkative in Spanish than many foreigners, I wonder if I will ever reach a level of proficiency in Spanish where I feel satisfied. The slowness of Mexican bureaucracy is amazing at times. I miss friends at home. And just because I’m living in another country doesn’t mean I’m free of concerns for my own country and our planet.

Buying this house in Mexico is an experiment. Will we live here for many years? Off and on, with a home also in our town in Colorado? With this our only home (as it is at present), just visiting in the US? Or will we end up back in the US after an interlude here? There’s no way to know yet. For now, it’s a matter of doing my best to live each day fully. Now that we have all our essential furniture (and a washing machine we got yesterday, tra la), we can begin to get back to doing some real work, on our websites and otherwise. That will get me a bit more centered, I’m sure. It’s been close to a year since I’ve been able to do as much writing as I want to.

Of course, we still have to figure out how to maintain a swimming pool and give it a good scrubbing or hire someone to do that, change the electric bill to our names, figure out where we can get snail mail, consider whether to buy a car in Mexico or wait till our next trip to the US, and on and on. For now, I’d better try to catch up on my email. The fencing guys are doing some welding and we can’t use our computers when they are doing that as the welding crashes our surge protectors. They’ve gone off to lunch, so I have a while!

3 Comments from the old blog:

Rosana, you are so right. Like you guys, we love Mexico but it is also a challenge. The challenge is fun now but I wonder if the day will come when it is a fun challenge but a physical and emotional challenge.

I’m going thru some of the things you went through when you were putting your USA house up for sale. First it seems like a good idea then I want to run hide under the bed.

Hey Rosana, I was just remembering a reading I did with you a very long time ago, when we were reading the ‘energy’ off a map. I remember an area with a lake which seemed to have a lot of energy for you to move to.Is that the same lake? I have been expecting all along that you would be sending back pics of a lake home.
I am so glad to hear how well you are doing.

I love reading your blog, thanks for keeping in touch with us all this way.